“We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilisation is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.”

- Sam Harris

COMMENT | So Mahadi Awang, a representative from the Yayasan Dakwah Islamiah Malaysia (Yadim), claimed that “Muslims who turn atheists only do so because they wish to break away from the chains of the Islamic way of life in order to experience pleasure”, which seems a rather dubious assertion.

If anything, what the official narratives of Islam in this country have demonstrated are that Muslims have to be prevented from seeking “illicit” sex, alcohol, smoking, music videos, movies, books, pornography, the company of the opposite sex and of course, excessive laughter. Now the reality is that many Muslims have sex, drink alcohol, smoke, watch music videos, movies and pornography (online), mingle with the opposite sex, and laugh a lot. Hence as Muslims, they already experience pleasure but what prevents them from openly experiencing pleasure are the religious police who are paid to ensure that they stop having pleasure.

Of course, if you are a rich Muslim, then you are exempt from the overt policing that your average Muslim is subjected to. Hence the more logical explanation as to why some Muslims become atheist – let’s dispense with the deeper intellectual motives for a moment – is not because they want to experience pleasure – they do that already – but because they do not want their pleasure policed by the state. Of course, in Malaysia they have to be quiet about it but sometimes affirming your non-belief with simpatico people provides clarity that all the religious indoctrination that they have received since birth has not.

I really do not blame the Umno state for coming down hard on Muslim atheists. Since the constitution defines who a “Malay” is and Islam is the most important part of that definition, what happens when a Malay chooses to shed his or her faith? Does he or she cease being “Malay”? If someone is not a “Malay” anymore, what happens to the special privileges?

Since there are Christian and other “bumiputeras”, the argument can be made that an atheist Malay is still technically a bumiputera unless of course there is legislation in Malaysia which sanctions a lack of belief in God. But wait, the first principle in the Rukunegara is “Belief in God”, which is annoying to many atheists but more importantly, it means that a Muslim atheist is in a religious quagmire that he or she may never break free from.

I mean no oppositional political party is going to defend an atheist Muslim’s non-belief. So-called “secular” parties fund Islamic religious institutions, champion the rights of non-Muslims faiths and champion the rights of religious freedoms offering a mixed bag of secular principles that more often than not does more damage to secular principles than inaction itself. This is why Islamic extremism is on the rise. Of course, if folks got their noses out – just for a minute – of the 1MDB cesspool, they would realise that the opposition mired in religious politics is part of the problem.

Read what Yenny Wahid, daughter of the late Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, said - “We're not just coming up with a counter narrative, we are coming up with a counter identity, and that's what AI (Archipelago Islam) is all about. We believe we're good Muslims but to be a good Muslim, we don't have to accept the recipes that are handed out by some radicals from the Middle East."

What are the Muslim counter identities here? The Muslim as feminist? The Muslim as liberal? The Muslim who does not...